


Queening

by yunitsa



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunitsa/pseuds/yunitsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She could hear the virginals from three rooms over, and knew that he was back.</i> AU, set just before Queens' Play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> I wanted very much to write you a Lymond story, but I've been travelling away from my copies of the books, so this little piece is all I could come up with. I hope it's not too far off the mark!

She could hear the virginals from three rooms over, and knew that he was back. It was a song that they had once sung together.

“Next time,” said Christian sternly, “you really might deign to come in through the front door.”

“Where would be the fun?” The glittering descant he played was like the breeze from the open window, brushing over her face. “You know I should expire like any knight of legend, if not continually presented with battlements to storm.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do realise that.” She sat down, smoothing her skirts. “What brings you?”

“The pleasure of your company?” he assayed. Christian raised an eyebrow, able to aim it infallibly toward where he sat. “Your husband is with the queen. I heard that my own name has been mentioned.”

“You’ve been waiting for this.”

“I am a dancer without a partner,” he agreed.

Footsteps in the house. She knew that it was Tom before he said a word, knew to stretch out her hand toward where he would be standing. He was not surprised to find Francis there, and told him, gruff-voiced, of what the Queen Dowager had wanted. France, and not as Master of Culter neither. The Master of Culter was too well-known.

“How excellent,” he answered, silk over steel, once the beginning of a plan had been hammered out between them. “I’ve always longed to play Vice at a farce.”

“Take care it doesn’t turn into a tragedy,” said Erskine.

“‘ _Deus,’ dist li reis, ‘si penuse est ma vie!_ ’ You, in this instance, playing the Archangel Gabriel.”

Sitting with Francis on one side and Tom on the other, she once more felt grateful that there were many kinds of love in the world: the warm hearth-fire and the roaring tempest. Perhaps even Francis Crawford’s blaze might one day be banked to a more comfortable temperature, but that would require him to grow up first, and the world seemed to be determined not to let him.

Christian was against him going to France: she thought a few more border raids and some years of salutary boredom might contrive to make a human being out of him. But she knew hers was the minority opinion.

“I'll come,” she said. “There is no harm in a wife dictating letters to her husband, I should think. And I have missed the little Queen Mary.”

Later, Tom took her aside, and because he was Tom and not some other husband, he asked her, “You will take care of him, Christian?”

“I will try,” she replied. “He will not want to be cared for; he is not used to it. But I will try, and spite the devil.”

  



End file.
